XVII
ROOTS AND HERBS
THE dawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces foundPrime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do.Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was theusual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growingweaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe,and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordlessand despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they mightby now be within reach of help.
It was when matters were at this most distressing pass that thewriting-man's invention, pricked alive by what Lucetta had saidconcerning her mother's skill with simples, opened a temerarious door ofhope. Making his charge as comfortable as he could, and leaving a cup ofwater where she could reach it, he told her he was going for a walk.
Taking the brook for a pathfinder, he traced its course until it led himinto a region of opener spaces where there was a better chance forground growth. In the first weed patch he came to he began to pluck andtaste. Unhappily, his knowledge of botany was perilously near a minusquantity; there were few of the weeds that he knew even by name. At theimminent risk of poisoning himself, he went on, chewing a leaf here andthere, not knowing in the least what he was looking for, but having aninchoate idea that a febrifuge ought to be something bitter.
The tasting process gave him a variety of new experiences. The leaves ofone weed burned his mouth like fire, and he had to stop and plunge hisface into the brook to extinguish the conflagration. Those of anothermade him deathly sick. Finally he came to a tall plant with bluish-whiteflowers which looked familiar, in a way, though he could not recall itsname. A chewed leaf convinced him at once that he need seek no farther.There was the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in its horrible acridity; itclung to him tenaciously while he was gathering an armful of the plant,and went with him on his return to the camp--this, in spite of the factthat he stopped frequently to wash his mouth with brook water.
"What have you there?" was Lucetta's query when he came in with hisburden.
"I don't know, but I am hoping you can tell me," he said, giving her aspray of the weed to look at. "Have you ever seen it before?"
"Hundreds of times," she returned. "It is a common weed in Ohio. But Ihaven't the slightest idea what it is."
Prime groaned. "More of the town-bred education," he deprecated. "Butnever mind; they can't call us nature-fakirs, whatever other foolishname we may be earning for ourselves."
"What are you going to do with it?" she asked.
"Wait and you'll see."
With the bread-mixing tin for a stew-pan Prime made a rich decoction ofthe leaves. When the mess began to simmer and steam the poor patientraised herself on one elbow to look at it.
"You are not going to make me drink all that, are you, Donald?" sheprotested weakly.
"Oh, no; not all of it. Wait until it's properly cooked and I'll showyou what I am going to do with it."
The cooking took some time, but the culinary effort offered a milddiversion and was at least a change from the deadly routine of doingnothing. The steam rising from the stewing leaves gave off a peculiarlyafflicting odor, and Lucetta sniffed it apprehensively.
"It smells very horrible," she ventured. "Is it going to taste as bad asit smells?"
"That, my dear girl, is on the knees of the gods," he returnedoracularly.
"How did you find it?" she wanted to know.
"By the simple process of cut and try. And I can assure you that,however bad it may smell or taste, it hasn't anything on some of theleaves I've been chewing this morning."
When the dose was sufficiently cooked Prime fished the leaves out of theliquor with a forked twig, and carried the stew-pan to the brook totake the scalding edge off of the ill-smelling decoction.
"Are you ready to be poisoned?" he asked when he came back.
"You're--you're sure it _isn't_ poison, aren't you?" she quavered.
"No, but I am going to be," and with that he shut his eyes, held hisbreath, and took a long drink from the stew-pan of fate, disregardingeasily, in the frightful bitterness of the draft, Lucetta's little cryof dismay.
"Merely trying it on the dog," he gasped when he put the pan down andturned away so that she should not see the face contortions--grimacesforthshowing the resentment of an outraged palate. Then he went to siton his blanket-roll to await results. "If--if it doesn't kill me, thenyou can try it; but--but we'll wait a few minutes and see what it'sgoing to do to me."
When the results proved to be merely embittering and not immediatelydeadly, he became a nurse again.
"I have left it as hot as you can drink it," he said, offering thebasin. "It seems as if it ought to do more good that way. Take a goodlong swig, if you can stand it."
Lucetta put her lips to the mixture and made a face of disgust.
"Ou-e-e-e!--_boneset!_" she shuddered. "I'd know it if I should meet itin another world--it takes me right back to my childhood and mother'sroots and herbs! I can't, Donald; I simply _can't_ drink all of that!"
"Drink as much as you can. It's good for little sick people," he urged,trying to twist the wryness of his own aftermath into a smile. "If thehorrible taste counts for anything, it ought to make you well in fiveminutes."
Lucetta did her duty bravely, and when the worst was over Prime tuckedher up in the blankets, adding his own for good measure. Then he made upa roasting fire, having some vague notion brought over from his boyhoodthat fever patients ought to sweat. Past this, he made a sad cake ofpan-bread for his own midday meal, and when it was eaten he found thatLucetta had fallen asleep, and was further encouraged when he saw thatfine little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.
It was late in the afternoon before she awoke and called him.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked.
"Much better; only I'm so warm I feel as if I should melt and run away.Can't you take at least one of the blankets off?"
"Not yet. You like to cook things, and I am giving you some of your ownmedicine. This is Domestic Science as applied to the human organization.Just imagine you are a missionary on one of the South Sea Islands, andthat you are going to be served up presently _a la_ Fiji. Shall I try tofix you up something to eat?"
"Not yet. But I feel as if I could drink the brook dry."
"No cold water," he decided authoritatively. "The doctor forbids it. Butyou may have another drink of hot boneset tea."
"Oh, please, not again!" she pleaded; and at that he made her a cup ofthe other kind of tea, which she drank gratefully.
"Taste good?" he inquired.
"It tastes like the boneset--everything is going to taste like bonesetfor the next six weeks."
"Don't I know?" he chuckled. "Hasn't it already spoiled my dinner forme? I could taste it in everything." Then he told her about hisexperiment in pan-bread, adding: "I have saved a piece of it so that ifyou wish to commit suicide after you get well, the means will be athand."
"Do you think I am going to get well, Donald?"
"Sure you are! You'll have to do it in self-defense. Just think of theoceans of bitterness you'll have to swallow if you don't. What ispuzzling me now is to know what I am going to feed you. Do you supposeyou could tell me how to make some pap or gruel, or something of thatsort?"
She smiled at this, as he hoped she would, and said there was no need ofcrossing that bridge until they should come to it. Shortly after thisshe fell asleep again, and by nightfall Prime was overjoyed to find thather breathing was more natural, and that the fever was not rising. Withthe coming of the darkness a fine breeze blew up from the river, and hewas overjoyed again when it proved strong enough to drive the tormentingmosquitoes back into the forest.
That night he was able to make up some of the lost sleep of the twopreceding nights, and when daybreak came another burden was lifted.Lucetta had slept all night, and she declared she was feeling m
uchbetter; that the fever seemed to be entirely gone. This brought thequestion of nourishment to the fore again, and Prime attacked itbravely, opening their last tin of peas and making a broth of the liquorthickened with a little of the reground flour. Lucetta ate it to obligehim, though it was as flat and tasteless as any unsalted mixture mustbe.
"Are you always as good as this to every strange woman you meet, CousinDonald?" she said, meaning to make the query some expression of her owngratitude.
"Always," he returned promptly. "I can't help it, you know; I'm builtthat way. But you are no strange woman, Lucetta. If I can't do more foryou, I couldn't very well do less. We are partners, and thus far wehave shared things as they have come along--the good and the bad. Whatis troubling me most now is the same thing that was troubling me lastnight: I don't know what I am going to feed you. You need a meat brothof some kind."
"Not any more of the smoked venison, please!" she begged.
"No, it ought to be fresh meat of some sort. By and by, if the feverdoesn't come back, I'll take the gun and see if I can't get a rabbit. Isaw three yesterday morning while I was out chewing leaves. You won't beafraid to be left alone for a little while, will you?"
"After what we have been through, I think I shall never be afraid ofanything again," she averred soberly. "And to think that I was onceafraid of a mouse!"
"That is nothing," he laughed; "you probably will be afraid of a mouseagain when you get back to an environment in which the mouse is properlyan object of terror. I shan't think any the less of you if that doeshappen."
She smiled up at him.
"Men always talk so eloquently about the womanly woman: just what dothey mean by that, Donald? Is it the mouse-coward?"
"It differs pretty widely with the man, I fancy," he returned. "I knowmy own ideal."
"She is the imaginary girl whose picture you are going to show me whenwe get out?"
He laughed happily. "You mustn't make me talk about that girl now,Lucetta. Some day I'll tell you all about her. Perhaps it is only fairto say that she is not so terribly imaginary as she might be."
"Of course not--if you have her picture," was the quiet reply; and alittle while after that she told him she was sleepy again, and that hemight take the gun and go after a rabbit if that was what he wished todo.
She did go to sleep, but Prime did not go hunting until after the middaymeal; and thus it happened that when Lucetta awoke, along in theafternoon, she found herself alone. For an hour or two she was contentto lie quietly, waiting for Prime to return, but when the afternoondrew to a close and he still failed to put in an appearance she got up,rather totteringly, and replenished the camp-fire.
Another hour passed and she began to grow anxious. The spruce grove wasplunged in shadows, but the sun had not yet set for the upper regions ofthe air. By the time it was fully dark she knew that Prime was lost, andin this new terror she was able to forget, in some measure at least, theeffects of her late illness. Bestirring herself once more, she put morewood on the fire, hoping that it might blaze high enough to serve as asignal for the wanderer.
It was all she could do, and having done it she sat down to wait, heranxiety growing sharper as the evening wore on and there was neithersight nor sound to foreshadow the lost one's return.
Stranded in Arcady Page 19
